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Democratic Party in Worse Shape than Thought

Prior to the 2016 Presidential Election, it appeared that the White House would once again belong to the Democrats. While many thought that there was no way that Hillary Clinton could win, Donald Trump ended up winning every showdown state and won the election by a strong electoral vote margin, despite not winning the popular vote. After the election, it was clear that the Democratic Party was in trouble and that it needed to do a lot to gain control back. However, after a deeper analysis, it appears that the party may be in more trouble than they originally thought (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/opinion/the-democratic-party-is-in-worse-shape-than-you-thought.html).

Based on the New York Times article, there is a lot of key information from the latest election results that show that the Democratic Party may have taken more of a step back than many thought. One area of the country that appears to have turned is the middle class. After supporting Obama for the last eight years, more members of the middle class decided to support Donald Trump. Part of this is likely due to the frustration over the job market, which Trump promised to correct following some changes to the immigration policy.

While the middle class change was a surprise, others were shocked by the change in the level of voter turnout. While there was a lot of support for Obama by the African American voters, it appears that the interest and level of support dropped in the prior election. There was a 7 percent decline in voter turnout from the African American voters during the 2016 election, compared to the prior election. This was a much bigger drop than anticipated and could have had a direct impact on a few different state electoral votes.

Going forward, the Democratic Party will need to take additional steps to attract back many of the voters. The biggest elections will take place in the next two years, when many new Congress seats are up for reelection.